News - BT's dial-up internet service closes on 1st September

[HEXUS]

Company says only about 1,000 customers still use 'narrowband'.

Read more.

[RussiaForever]

Why in England would anyone still be using narrowband?

[aidanjt]

Why in England would anyone still be using narrowband?

The more remote parts of the country would be too far away from their exhanges for ADSL signalling to be viable.

[sirtrouserpress]

Glad I got my Grandparents moved onto broadband now, they were very reluctant to move on as they thought they wouldn't see a boost in speeds...

[whosyagamer]

Back in 2010 Openreach engineers when they go to work in some of the broadband enabled exchanges to do migrations, had to still connect via dialup to get into BT's test systems. This was to check the lines they were working on to check they were ok. It's seems daft when the exchanges were broadband enabled and hopefully before 2013 these exchanges have been updated so that engineer's do not still have to connect via narrowband. I know this as I used to be one of those engineers.

[Bagpuss]

Probably still faster than some Virgin Media broadband connections during peak time.

[sammydarlo]

I still have a PAYG dial up connection as a back up for when my broadband connection goes down - you know on those occasions when some moron digging up a road or pavement doesn't look at his plans to see where the cables run and slices through them (and other such occasions) It doesn't get used often, but it does get used and provides an excellent emergency alternative because the chances of both broadband and phone line being down are much less that just one or the other. But if you want to put all your eggs in just one basket, the risk is all yours....

[crossy]

Perhaps inertia had caused them to remain on BT dial-up for so long, forking out £17.25 per month for the service. BT suggests its own broadband service will be available to many of these customers, priced from £10 per month, whilst offering a better internet experience.

Think my brother in law was effected by this - one of those for which narrowband was "good enough", although I'm going to have some fun at his expense pointing out that he's perhaps paying more for a slower speed.

I still have a PAYG dial up connection as a back up for when my broadband connection goes down - you know on those occasions when some moron digging up a road or pavement doesn't look at his plans to see where the cables run and slices through them (and other such occasions) It doesn't get used often, but it does get used and provides an excellent emergency alternative because the chances of both broadband and phone line being down are much less that just one or the other. But if you want to put all your eggs in just one basket, the risk is all yours....

Same here for the odd occasion when Virginmedia decide to do some hardware work (which isn't that often). Actually I got one of those T-Mobile wifi hotspots, as long as you use it every couple of months, you can just top up when you like (£2/day through to £15/week) and since it's battery powered and 3G based I'm covered against total loss of wired connections (phone and cable broadband) and power loss, (which happened recently). I can also use it in preference to expensive hotel 'net connection when I'm away from the "office".

Downside of the T-Mobile box is that it's obviously dependent on the quality of your 3G connection, which is annoying because T-Mobile/EE seemed to have done something to my local connection recently - making it worse than it was ... no H+ or even H grade connections.

[kosch]

I still remember BT Surftime then I blended it with ISDN and it was even better!